Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Chai Chai

When I look at them
I see death.
Her frail thin body
moving from side to side
like a broken puppet.
His sore ridden body
and lost eyes
searching for something he’ll never see again.
I watch him,
trying to find the words
he used to know so effortlessly.
His mind,
is like a record player,
stuck in the same groove
playing the same stories over and over:
63 million shares of Columbia pictures
that he sold too soon,
going to Las Vegas to win a million dollars at the dice table,
how he quit college to help his sick father,
working eighty hours a week in the grocery store
before I was ever born.
singing
the Polish chai chai song
every time I pour myself a cup of tea.
It is always the same.
Twenty-four hours a day.